The ramblings of M. T. Miller, author

Category Archives: Ramblings

Post navigation

I’ve always liked the original, and there’s been five trillion different covers since it came into existence (not an estimate; the actual number), but to see Cristina Vee do a metal version blows my mind.

I must contact her if they ever make a film about my work (-666% chance of that happening). She would make the best Rush ever. I’d even let them cast Nick Cage as the Nameless for trade-off.

With all these glowing reviews, Black Panther must be not only the best superhero film of all time, but also the best movie ever, period. There can’t possibly be anything wrong with this, right? No way that it’s just another stale turd that Disvel regurgitates down our throats with the command “Swallow.”

Glad we got that cleared up.

In other news, I’m writing and I’m consuming media. I’ve finally gotten round to seeing season two of the Expanse. Love this show. Excellent writing and characterization, both for primary and secondary characters. I must marry Drummer. Then we will make a bunch of emotionless kids whose only purpose will be to kill. It will be glorious.

I’ve seen this comedy flick called Killing Gunther. Critics say it’s bad. I say it’s quite good. It has Ahnold, which means that it can’t fail. A couple good laughs with some solid pathos. Reminded me of a nice song.

I’m listening to music from the Transistor OST while I write. Doesn’t really fit the mood of what I’m making but it keeps me going fast. As for the story itself, I’m off to a good start. I think I’ve learned a lot over these two years of walking the path of the writer. Time to apply it.

Yeah, I’m reading the first Witcher book. Figured if I’m writing about monster hunting, I might as well see how an established writer has done it. It’s quite fun but kinda rough. Might be the English translation, it’s atrocious. Geralt loves his combat pirouettes, but I guess it could be worse. It’s interesting how it took me two stories to figure out I was reading adaptations of fairy tales. For now it’s very different from what I’m trying to make actually, which is unexpected. Let’s see where it goes.

I’m sitting at a crossroads. I’ve been here for for the last couple months.

“What now?” I keep asking myself. My mind is on fire. I have more ideas than I can count or remember, and I want to turn them all into viable stories. But the book industry is a horrifying thing. It eats people alive and shits out books. More and more keep pouring out, quicker and quicker. It never stops, and most gets wiped away.

It took the Nameless Chronicle a bit less than two years to start selling reasonably. Two years of my work being continuously wiped from the book industry’s asshole and tossed aside. It’s maddening to think how much effort, planning, and money one can put into something only to have it MAYBE pay off some time in the far future. This is a task for only the maddest of the mad.

For me, in essence.

I’m now actually doing decently, and there’s been a constant upward trend. This is good. On the other hand, this still doesn’t suit my needs. I need greater success, and I need it as quickly as possible. If I keep spending all my earnings on editing, covers, and marketing, then in essence I am working for nothing. It is work I enjoy, yes, but not at all worthy of the ascetic lifestyle I have to lead to make it possible.

I’m rambling, so let’s summarize before I get even further from the essence of what I’m saying here: My next work should have immediate marketability, as opposed to the cult/sleeper hit potential of the Nameless Chronicle. I’ve already done the write-what-I-want thing, and it’s only started to take off recently. If I had to push two biplanes instead of pull one with a jet, I think I’d go full psycho.

So… go through with the Monster-Hunter-Age-Of-Enlightenment-Bloodborne thing (that I’ve already planned and structured out), or reach into something with mass appeal, like Space Opera? I foresee a massive surge of cyberpunk in 2019. and onward, so that might be the way to go. Perhaps a mixture of the two. There doesn’t seem to be a good answer. Everything can work and everything can fail.

I don’t doubt my ability to tell a good story and tell it well. I have eyes. I read and compare. For me, some degree of success in the future is, I think, inevitable. But the question remains: When? I’m not nearly as young as I look. If option A gives me earlier breakthrough than option B, then why take option B? Because I want to? I do, but do I want to dedicate 2 more years of my life to a series that may really take off in 5?

Cate Blanchett as Hela. I love her looks. I love her character, and I love the way the plot let her have actual teeth (something usually lacking in Marvel movie villains). Of course I use the word “plot” in the vaguest sense here. This film is a clusterfuck in which everyone acts like a mentally challenged 10-year-old. But Hela was gold.

More Cate. I need more Cate. Preferably via direct injection into my bloodstream, so the effect lasts longer.

No, the movie is not treading new ground. No, I am not annoyed by its casting, and neither am I impressed by it. I am not in any way emotionally attached to Star Wars. I used to be, but I also used to be a quick little milky tadpole.

If the 38% gap between the critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t tell you something is seriously wrong here, then whatever I type won’t be enough. But I’m going to do it anyway. Spoilers bigger than the gaping chasm of Goatse lie ahead. You have been warned.

Normally I would start by saying that this movie doesn’t make a lick of sense. Then someone would try to counter my statement by claiming that it is a film about people flailing laser swords and using space magic. Their counterargument would of course be utter rubbish. The fantastical can be as fantastical as it wants to be, but only under one condition: it needs to follow its own inner logic.

Supreme Leader Snoke has godlike power and awareness. Enough to turn Kylo Ren to the dark side by some kind of mega-telepathy. He is capable of reading his pupil’s innermost thoughts and feelings, but only up to the point where the plot wants him to lose this power. And who the hell is Snoke? I know, I know, the Last Jedi is about throwing away tradition and replacing it with something better. Great. Know what else it is? An example of bad storytelling. When you build up a villain, then not only not find a way of working him into the universe but also kill him with a handwave, your story disintegrates.

Rey cannot fail. She is phenomenal at everything. She instinctively waves a lightsaber as if she was born with it. She is better here than she was in the last film, so I’ll give her that. But only a completely amazing arc can salvage the character at this point. The way she was executed, she is not much more than a self-insert a fifteen-year-old would’ve thought up over the course of a sleepless night. And no, that isn’t okay. There is wish-fulfillment and there is handing out participation awards. This is the latter.

Kylo is the best character in this film, which doesn’t say much. I always found him hilarious, almost like a parody, but he is one of the few things this movie doesn’t outright fail at. However, he suffers from the same thing that afflicts Snoke: selective incompetence. The guy can freeze a blaster beam mid-flight, but gets beaten twice by our untrained heroine. Why did the people who made this go to such lengths to establish that our villain is weaker than our hero? Aren’t they aware that it kills all tension? Also:

“IT’S NOT A PHASE, MOM!”

Luke is completely wasted. He is only there to drag in the old fans so the film can spit in their faces. Which sucks because Hamill gives us an amazing performance. Even if the makers wanted to push him into the “mentor” role, he isn’t even allowed to do that, because Rey cannot get overshadowed by anyone, ever. And his final scenes are perhaps the worst example of directory fickleness I’ve ever seen. He’s there, then he’s not there, then he dies. A cheap attempt at an emotional jab.

Super-Leia was a completely braindead idea. The owl-gerbils were annoying but ignorable, so I won’t rage about them. Finn didn’t need to be in the film, he literally just ate up screen time that could be put to better use. The same could be said for Poe, albeit to a lesser degree (at least he got to impact the plot in some minor way). Rose’s mugshot should be put into the Thesaurus right next to the word “pointless.”

Pointless. Funny that I used that word, because it also describes this whole post. As of me writing this article, the movie has already raked in well over 494 million dollars. That money would be better spent if it were tossed into the gaping abyss of Goatse. The thought of that image alone is funnier than all the jokes in the Last Jedi, combined.